By Trevor Fielding, Former Regulatory Affairs Manager, British Coatings Federation; and Malcolm Morris, Member, ISO Working Group
The global protective coatings market recently celebrated a significant achievement in the field of standards development, with the publication of the revision of ISO 12944, “Paints and varnishes—Corrosion protection of steel structures by protective paint systems.” This article describes these recent revisions and how they impact corrosion protection of steel surfaces exposed to atmospheric conditions, especially those located in more extreme environments such as offshore oil platforms....
A couple of side-notes from someone with longtime experience with both standards (ISO 12944 & Norsok):
1) the number of coats and the minimum coating thickness have been a HARD requirement for Norsok System 1 for ages
2) Kind of strange to refer to ISO 20340 under the new ISO 12944 since 20340 has been withdrawn & indeed now incorporated in ISO 12944-9. Coincidently the very standard Norsok was referring to for the purpose of the qualification of their coating systems? Checkmate?
c) Norsok does still require 25 test-cycles as per ISO 20340, as opposed to 16 cycles for C5 Very High Durability
d) As per ISO 12944 coating manufacturers can test in-house and attest/certify the coating systems themselves / Norsok requires third party testing
e) And probably the biggest MISSED opportunity for ISO 12944 is that it still has NO HARD requirements for any kind of qualifications of blasters, painters, let alone QA/QC ("… by suitable qualified and experienced people", says nothing) Norsok has had this for ages.
f) And on a final note, if you already have ISO 12944-5:2018, do NOT bother obtaining the 2019 release (which is another 100 Euros and contains nothing more than a couple of commas that were moved and some footnote numbering that were changed, nothing on a technical level) Pretty sad ISO has to revert to such practices…
In conclusion, YES ISO 12944 is a good improvement over the previous version, but in terms of 'sound quality requirements' still trailing behind the (2012) Norsok requirements.
And with ISO now also reverting to some very poor update practices (12944:2019) they lost me as a fan...
Just my 2 cents worth (and NO I'm not interested to pay another 2,5k per year to help ISO write their standards - too democratic)
Comment from Nicole de Varennes, (3/9/2020, 10:16 AM)
Fantastic comments Gunnar!
Comment from Marc-André Vaillant, (3/9/2020, 3:09 PM)
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